I am a software engineer from 11+ years and my last job was a Principal Software Engineer in a software development company for about 5 years. I have a family and I find it difficult to get time for the family and kids. So i decided to work from home as a freelancer. I was able to find a company who hired me as a freelancer for their project and from last 2 years I am working as a freelancer with them. After becoming freelancer My life got simplified and I get more time for my family and friends. I can travel between cities and even countries without worrying about reaching office. I keep my laptop with me and I can work where ever I am thanks to 4g network connectivity I keep connected while on the go.

My life was going smooth and one day I learned about Toptal by reading an internet article. I visited Toptal website and found that they provide the best talent for freelance industry; they claim they provide top 3% of the talent and I saw that they are now leading in this field. I also read success stories of freelancers in news articles in many blogs. They have the top clients to work for like JPMorgan, Pfizer and many more. I also observed that they only select the best top talent by having a screening process. In this process they take collect personal and professional information after that they take interview on Skype. It is difficult to get selected if you are not top talent.

After a lot of research I decided to apply at Toptal, I am confident that I am one of the top developers and make full use of this platform to give benefit to prospective clients and can also take benefit by gaining experience while working with top employers. There are also many freelancing websites but they are flooded by cheap companies who hired some marketing people who constantly spam the client projects and genuine freelancer's bids burry under those spam bids. There are also many non-serious clients on those platforms who never select any bidder and waste time of the freelancers.

I am hoping Toptal is not like those platforms and It selects only genuine freelancers which they claim. If I get selected then I will write more about my experiences.

The first version of ASP.NET 1.0 came out almost 14 years ago. Since then many developers have used it to build and run great web applications, and over the years we have added and evolved many, many capabilities to it.

Today we are excited to announce the release of ASP.NET Core 1.0! This new release is one of the most significant architectural updates we’ve done to ASP.NET. As part of this release we are making ASP.NET leaner, more modular, cross-platform, and cloud optimized. ASP.NET Core is now available, and you can start using it today by downloading it here.

ASP.NET Core is an open source web framework for building modern web applications that can be developed and run on Windows, Linux and the Mac. It includes the MVC framework, which now combines the features of MVC and Web API into a single web programming framework. ASP.NET Core is built on the .NET Core runtime, but it can also be run on the full .NET Framework for maximum compatibility.

We challenged everything instead of delivering an incremental update so you can have an extremely modular, fast and lightweight platform perfect for the new era of software development where monolithic applications are replaced by small, autonomous services that can be deployed individually. All of that while keeping and extending what .NET is best for: developer productivity, and modern languages and libraries.

With ASP.NET Core we are making a number of architectural changes that makes the core web framework much leaner (it no longer requires System.Web.dll) and more modular (almost all features are now implemented as NuGet packages – allowing you to optimize your app to have just what you need). With ASP.NET Core you gain the following foundational improvements:

Build and run cross-platform ASP.NET apps on Windows, Mac and Linux

Built on .NET Core, which supports true side-by-side app versioning

New tooling that simplifies modern Web development

Single aligned web stack for Web UI and Web APIs

Cloud-ready environment-based configuration

Built-in support for dependency injection

Tag Helpers which makes Razor markup more natural with HTML

Ability to host on IIS or self-host in your own process

The end result is an ASP.NET that you’ll feel very familiar with, and which is also now even more tuned for modern web development.

This is a 1.0 product which means it is just the beginning and does not have all the functionality of ASP.NET 4.x stack. For example, features like SignalR and Web Pages will come later in the year and other features like Web Forms which are deeply tied to System.Web will remain in the .NET 4.x framework. If you are an existing ASP.NET 4.x developer do not feel rushed to move to ASP.NET Core, we still plan to update Web Forms, MVC, Web Pages, SignalR on .NET 4.x as well.

If you are not a .NET developer, now it’s a great moment to try it. You can enjoy the productivity and power of .NET with no constraints, on any OS, with any tool and for any application. All of that fully open source, developed with the community and with Microsoft’s support.

The next major release of the .NET Framework, .NET 4.5, allows you to easily use Windows 8 technologies, like Windows Runtime, directly from .NET 4.5. Accessing your data is easier than ever with support for the newest features in SQL Server and support for WebSockets. Programs are more responsive, with the AWAIT keyword, faster ASP.NET startup and an improved server Garbage Collector. .NET 4.5 incorporates key customer feedback, with the newest MEF features, support for long running workflows with State Machines, and improved HTML 5 support in ASP.NET. In this overview talk, you’ll learn about all of these technologies, and get pointers to deeper dives where you can learn more.

New features and improvements are described in the following sections:

Tanmay Vora has just posted on Leadership. I liked most are three points which is mostly necessary for a leader.

Blaming is easy but taking responsibility, learning from mistakes and implementing those lessons to improve constantly is difficult. It is these difficult things that makes a real leader. Similarly, for an organization, building a culture where people are not afraid of taking responsibility is critical.

Leaders need to watch and choose their words. Every conversation with others is an opportunity to make a difference. When you talk negative, focus too much on problems and blame others, you are missing the opportunity.

Leadership is about using “we” language more than “I versus them”, and that kind of leadership owns the failures as much as they own their successes. It is about celebrating the contributions from each team member when team succeeds, and take collective ownership of failures, learn from them and improve. It is also about knowing when to step up and take the lead, versus when to step down and let people perform.